Health Nation
Chicago hosts Work, Wellness & Space Summit which kicks off larger research & innovation initiative
Editor’s Note: The below was published in early February, before the full force of COVID-19 changed our plans — and all of our lives. We leave this post here to help explain how our plans have changed. You can learn more about that here and here.
It’s a well-established fact:: Where we work impacts how we work — and how well we work.
A healthy office in a healthy building can, among other things, contribute to the development of a calm and more productive atmosphere.
Employees, particularly younger employees, are not only seeking out jobs at companies that promote wellness for themselves and for the environment, they typically stay at those kinds of companies for a longer period of time.
“A manifest commitment to health and wellness is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for employers in this century; it is a need to have in order to remain competitive and successful,” said Howell J. Malham Jr., founder of GreenHouse::Innovation.
“That commitment, we contend, begins with a healthy space.”
The very idea of “space,” however, is changing — dramatically; as well as the collective attitude toward the concept of what we call “work”:: where and how we work, and why.
With these changes come a host of new social expectations, many of which are in direct conflict with what governs the attitudes and behavior of primary actors — developers, brokers, property managers, tenants — when it comes to engaging with “space” in all of its forms.
What’s doing this governing? We call them social norms.
To identify those norms, specifically those that prevent us from fully understanding the new dynamics of wellness, work and space, GreenHouse::Innovation and Greentarget are convening a summit in on April 23 with the founders of Learn Adapt Build (LAB)/Amsterdam and an international group of guest thinkers from global commercial real estate firms, as well as experts from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, health and wellness, and design.
“This summit is an important first step in a larger research and innovation initiative to explore new ways to engage with the concept of ‘space’ in America, particularly as it relates to the wellness of employers and employees,” said John E. Corey, president and founding partner, Greentarget.
“Our hope is to continue to discover new opportunities to incorporate sustainability in a more comprehensive way for the benefit of the businesses that lease space, the tenants who occupy the space, and the environment in which we all live.”
For more information, click here.